


with somebody who loves me

by buir



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Drinking, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, No Plot/Plotless, survivor's guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:02:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22238323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buir/pseuds/buir
Summary: Rip finds his self-imposed solitude very abruptly interrupted. He expects the worst, but gets... well, he's not sure if it's better or not.
Relationships: Rip Hunter & Ray Palmer
Kudos: 12





	with somebody who loves me

**Author's Note:**

> Set a little bit after the Season 1 finale. More a study of character voices than anything so I can feel comfortable writing filthy romance later.

He’d been so close to seeing Miranda and Jonas again.

It’s something he thinks about, sat in the captain’s quarters with a bottle of whiskey opened at his side. The glass with him has about a finger of it left, and Rip finishes the last of it without feeling the burn down his throat.

He’s more than content to spend all his time here, alone, with his alcohol and his hand hovering over the button that plays his family’s last words to him. He’s content with the ghosts, the memories, and the sense of regret hollowing him out—but since he’d commandeered the Waverider in less than legal ways, this feeling of content is what reminds him to expect something regardless.

So when a soft “Rip?” comes from the doorway, all he can do is let out a quiet sigh as he shuts his eyes for just a second, his hand moving away from where it’d nearly played the old transmission. When he lifts his head, though, his brows furrow at the sight of Ray—Ray with some tell-tale expression of worry on his face, brown eyes big and mouth turned down.

Rip pours himself another glass. “What is it, Dr. Palmer?”

“Oh! Well,” Ray starts, stepping in (dimly, Rip wonders if he’d been waiting for permission to), “I was gonna ask if you were eating dinner any time soon, but…” His gaze drifts to the open whiskey bottle, the glass in Rip’s hand, and the way it’s lifted up to his mouth for another gulp. “…it looks like you’re probably full-up already.”

“Intuitive,” Rip says dryly.

“Thanks,” Ray replies, and the smile on his face at the praise makes Rip’s mouth open before closing again around the ‘it wasn’t a compliment’ that almost left him. Instead, he’s quiet as Ray comes forward around the table to meet him, quiet as Ray carefully pushes things aside to make space for himself, quiet as Ray gives him a short look of question—but he _does_ raise a brow when Ray sits on the edge, his fingers linking together and moving to rest between his thighs. Ray settles with his legs swinging just a bit from where they dangle off the edge, somewhat juvenile in his position. His posture is atrocious.

But this is the posture of a man wanting to speak, Rip thinks, and so he waits, sipping at his whiskey and keeping his eyes on Ray’s, even if Ray is looking everywhere else besides back at him. At his refusal to continue, Rip finally opens with an, “I don’t suppose you wanted anything else?”

And Ray exclaims a little, “Oh.” Then his expression screws up in thought. “No. Not really.”

Both Rip’s brows are up now. “But you’re staying?”

“Mm.” Ray nods, twiddling his thumbs. “Unless you don’t want me to? ‘cause I can go—”

He’d been so close to seeing Miranda and Jonas again. The thought of that pulses in his mind like a drumbeat.

“No.” Rip doesn’t have the sense to be appalled at how quickly that word leaves him. “…no, Raymond. Let me just” – he gets to his feet, and though Ray looks alarmed when he takes a moment to regain his balance, Rip ends up moving just fine to open one of his drawers – “erm, I can’t very well drink alone, I think, with you sitting…”

He waves his hand dismissively, the sentence lost. “You ought to drink too, is what I’m saying.”

When Rip looks back at him, fingers wrapped around a glass from the 1930s, Ray has this expression on his face that he can’t quite decipher, all soft in his eyes and his mouth and in the way his shoulders are angled. But Rip pushes the budding confusion away, most especially when Ray lets out the most patient-sounding ‘okay’ he’s ever heard in his life, and instead pulls the glass up and out and blows into it in case any stray dust’s collected.

The whiskey is poured.

The glass is in Ray’s hand.

Rip picks his own up with a ‘cheers’, and Ray clinks his own against it with a smile.

But the silence continues, even with Ray holding his glass in two hands and taking quiet sips out of it. The silence continues, and Rip worries it’ll make him slip—make him tumble, as he always does, into thoughts of his wife, and his son, and of the hell that he could not save them from.

For some reason or other, however, it does not. The only sounds between them are of their breathing, and of the whiskey when it’s poured, and of the quiet clinks every time they share a ‘cheers’. It’s quiet, so quiet, but somehow it isn’t _deafening_ , and Rip wants to ask what this is, why it’s happening, what Ray thinks he’s _doing_ —

Except, without his noticing, his bottle’s gone empty, and Rip can’t hide his surprise.

“We’re out,” he says, and the anticlimactic nature of it all is almost embarrassing.

“Are we?” Ray asks. Only now that Rip looks at him again does he notice the pink on his cheeks and the slight haze in his eyes, soft like the rest of him and made fuzzy with drink. “Oh… that’s too bad. But I guess” – the soft slur of _guess_ makes something in Rip’s chest twist – “you should probably come to dinner now, huh?”

“I… what?”

“The food’s gonna be cold,” Ray says, “but it’s… I told them to leave us some. Gideon can heat it up, probably, unless you like cold pizza.”

Rip doesn’t care about the temperate details of food. Ray sort of stumbles when he slips off the table, having to hold onto it to steady himself, and he blinks those big eyes and shakes his head. He’s drunk, but he’s smiling, and he holds his hand out for Rip to take and rise from his seat for.

Their hands link, but in the end Ray almost falls forward when he pulls Rip up, and Rip has to be the one to stand on two feet and take his shoulder to keep him from losing his balance. Ray shakes his head again, and this time he brings both his arms up to keep himself steady.

“Oh, gosh.” Ray laughs, breath smelling _terrible_. “I’m sorry. Wow. I thought…”

“You didn’t have to drink so much,” Rip scolds him, as if he’s any better.

“I know,” Ray says around a giggle, “I just.” He puts a hand on Rip’s hand where it rests on his shoulder, holding it and giving it a small squeeze. “I didn’t want you to be alone, not after we couldn’t save—”

Ray catches himself, and Rip’s throat has gone dry where the words have stuck up like a cork in a bottle. Ray’s teeth dig into his lip; his hand is gentle as it pulls Rip’s off of him, and it’s just as gentle when he takes it in his own to hold.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, “that was mean of me to say. What I meant was…”

“Yes,” Rip says abruptly, tugging on Ray’s hand and leading him back around the table. “Yes, I’ll go to dinner.”

Ray makes a sound in his throat like a squeak. “Really?”

“I shouldn’t have to say this twice, Dr. Palmer.”

“Oh—sorry.” Ray’s hand squeezes his. “Yeah. I’m pretty drunk, is all, I don’t think my mind…”

“Next time,” Rip interrupts again, “you don’t need to catch up with me.”

“Next time?” Ray squeaks once more, then laughs. “I mean. Yeah. Absolutely. Next time, yeah.”

There must be a reason he didn’t go through with it—with flying into the sun and meeting his family again. It’s not something Rip expects to understand any time soon, and it’s not something he imagines he’d be able to shed the guilt off of like nothing.

But it occurs to him, watching Ray sway and hearing him laugh to hide his embarrassment, that perhaps it was for the better.

Miranda and Jonas couldn’t have been saved, and as close as Rip had been to death to join them…

“Ah!” Ray exclaims as they enter the galley. “They ate all the pizza!”

It might be better to be close to his friends, instead.


End file.
